It is arguable that since the Kennedy assassination, no man has wielded the power of public opinion to the degree that Walter Cronkite did. That power he used sparingly, carefully, and with measure. It is no accident that Johnson's assertion that if he lost Cronkite then he had lost middle America. Johnson misspoke. He had lost all of America and chose not to run for a second term.
In those days there were just three national news anchors and nobody watched the other two. If Cronkite reported a news item, then you knew it had happened as he reported it. It was the philosophy of CBS News that news was to be a public good, a public trust, and for decades the news division actually lost money. Stories had to be checked, rechecked, and then edited for assurance that the story itself was true and evenly delivered. The voice of that philosophy was Walter Cronkite.
Cronkite was stoic yet warm, smiling at good news, rarely frowning at bad, and when he editorialized, he did so with such measured reason that he carried the authority of public opinion because he was so honest in all his other reporting. Even if we didn't completely understand the complexities behind the news he was reporting, and with a mere half hour of national and world news a day that most people received they rarely did, Cronkite's opinion came to be trusted more than any other person alive; more than the pope, more than the president, more than Billy Graham.
He was not a beautiful man, not a pretty face. His set was plain, his clothing that of a reporter, not a fashion model. There were no splashy graphics, just film clips and pictures with occasional graphs and charts. The news from Cronkite was from Cronkite, not the channel or the station. During Vietnam and Watergate, Cronkite delivered the good and bad news as he saw it despite the wrath of the government coming down upon CBS when, "Uncle Walter," said something they didn't like. Spin, as we know it today, had no place in his broadcast nor in his interviews. If he was giving an opinion, he said it was his opinion. If what he reported was unpopular, he said it anyway. We trusted Walter Cronkite to such a degree because he was like us. Liberal or Conservative, Cronkite called the news as he saw it, working assiduously to stay as impartial as he could be, and we all knew he was speaking as a reporter who believed in capital, 'J', Journalism.
Looking around, there are few reporters still around from his era and none who reached quite the ability to guide America through some of its darkest hours with a quiet assurance. This man told us of the death of a president, the resignation of another, that a war was lost, that a vice-president was a tax cheat, that Nixon was going to China, and yes, that Elvis had died. In the tremendous social upheaval of the 60s and 70s, Cronkite could speak to both ends of the spectrum and all respected him because his agenda was the truth told as news, and editorial offered with the measured consideration of the impartiality he so prized because Walter Cronkite knew that when he spoke, the nation believed what he said.
I dearly wish those of you too young to remember him will take some time to view some of the tributes offered because I don't think you will ever see a journalist like him.